Yeah that's pretty common knowledge that AI teaches people to overporc and builds bad habits that fail against human opponents. It was especially bad when we only had CAI that responds to porc with non-stop suiciding, so you could win against an arbitrary number as long as you tech2ddm. Circuit seems much better in that regard, but it still seems that people tend towards 4 humans vs 10 AI porcy lagfests.

The answer to how to learn to play without porc and cheesy exploits is to restrict yourself from using them (cf. CCR challenge). Even just 1v1ing CAI while trying to play "fair" builds a pretty solid foundation, and with the new AIs (and 1v2) even more so. Of course eventually you need to move to playing humans if you want to grow.

Is there a replay where you beat CSI by porcing so I see what you're talking about?

Of course porcing is still very strong (watch some 1v1s and see how there are llts guarding every mex), but "dumb" porcing shouldn't work vs any of the new AIs. That is porcing with less than a third of the map's mexes.

I'm currently doing a rework of how CSI decides to push and controls units when doing so, but overporcing should already fail to eco domination -> superweapons.

When you're talking about smart porcing, watch Svatopluk and see how OP that is

Circuit produces arty in response to porc, but it doesn't recognize that Gauss & Razor are invincible and wastes most of its shots on these. It also produces assault units and then eventually attacks where it perceives the line to be weakest. I wouldn't say it does a great job of breaking porc fort, but then it doesn't do a great job of other forms of warfare either for the most part. AI is mostly good at macro and eco, which makes it better at large maps than small ones.

Only CAI (and to a lesser extent KGB) still throws its units into porc to die.

Circuit has no good response to porc, even if it is Stinger unless you let the artillery get to a large amount. It just seems to rush the thing, even if it other places are defenseless, it will rush the porc to break through a pointless objective.It does do artillery, but 1 DDM& shield=dead circuit.

I don't just "porc&wait", porc only gives me a defense line so when I play Artillery, Circuit just loses it's mind.

Yes, unless Circuit plays GS/HT, I almost always win on the battlefield, sometimes with casualties of 1:10 if I'm good. This is the weakness really, since circuit relies so much on GS being OP without AA, it can't beat me on the ground, and then it begins to suicide against AA without swapping fac.

@Deinfreund I don't play vs CSI, rather Circuit 1v2, and it is pretty annoying I must porc and build large amounts of Static AA to fend off the Brawler

1. in my expierience circuit does go around porc. maybe you refer to group-games, where all your teammates porc up as well, like on CCR. As somebody already pointed out, there is also a very good (and flashy) counter to mega-porc, even without silo: it´s called Disco-Rave-Party.

2. If you play against 2 ai, then you play at least against an advatage in starting-ressources and buildpower. this changes the meta ofc, because you are forced to porc or you will be overrun immiediatly. porc in this case gives you enough time to build up before the ai has arty. so practising for even games like 1v1 with 2 or more ai as opponents is somehow fail from the start. also, at least circuit, cai and csi do the same things most of the time, so after 1 or 2 games on a specific map, you will find yourself adapting to their strategies. human opponents will adapt to you as you adapt to the ai and hopefully to them.

The question is more: why should the ai not teach you to porc? because you assume that the role of an ai is to teach you how to play against humans? i am afraid to say that i think this is a false estimation of the capabilities of both humans and ais. At the moment, our ais are simply incapable of imitating humans, and (to a lesser degree) vice versa.

note: i personaly enjoy to play against bots as i do against humans, it´s just like 2 total different game-modes for me.

quote:but.....is an AI that avoids the player until he can overpower him fun for new players?

You dont design AI to be fun for new players.. thats how you end up with abominations like the Total War campaign AIs. You design AI to beat good player fairly, and then lobotomize it until nubs can beat it.

quote:Does the AI have builtin advantages over the player, namely extra resources?

No.

quote:1- manage groups of units, even if it's a single attack force, keep cohesion

KGB and circuit both do this.

quote:2- change composition depending on what the player has. If main threat to AI is porc, build more assault and artillery

Circuit does this more than kgb does, but kgb does build arty in response to porc (and certain other things that arty counters). KGB builds arty relative to the metal value of porc that the enemy has, I have no idea what circuit does.

quote:3- wait until it has about 3x as much value in their attack group as the defender has in the nearest porcy cluster, then attack

It also depends on what units the player has supporting the porc. Waiting too long to attack can be disadvantageous too. Keep in mind that picking targets is an expensive problem, since a given target may not have much threat in its general vicinity but may be blocked by a porc wall. The only way around that is to pick targets based on the total path threat cost, which is very expensive to calculate.

Or it could just raid. A resource advantage is possible, but generally a smarter AI is always better than a cheating AI or more AIs. Being able to beat 4 circuits on CCR doesn't necessarily make you a better player, since the strategies used for that don't really apply to a 1v1 vs a human.

quote:A resource advantage is possible, but generally a smarter AI is always better than a cheating AI or more AIs. Being able to beat 4 circuits on CCR doesn't necessarily make you a better player, since the strategies used for that don't really apply to a 1v1 vs a human.

Porcnabs don't want to get better. They don't want to move on to fight humans.

They just want an action-packed sandbox, they want to see more explosions, and they want the resource hax to blame any loss upon.

5 hammers on fight move are a perfect donation. Build your defender on a hill and they'll move into range suiciding while trying to kill it. Kill their radar or get a radar jammer and they won't see the defences and run straight into them. Make a quick push with a few rapiers or scalpels and those hammers are dead without you losing anything.

You're taking it for granted that the AI knows what you're up to and retreats the hammers when it has to, uses gremlins to scout and transitions into heavies when hammers are pointless.